Brattholmen

The old guesthouse location in Brattholmen on the east side of Litlesotra, was probably established in the first half of the 1700s. A list from 1748 mentions that the place “for some years has been inhabited by an Enrolled Sailor by the name of Peder Michelsen”. As was the case for most other military hosts, he was exempt from paying income tax.

Frette

Haganes

The gneiss landscape west and north of Bergen viewed in profile can remind us of a saw blade of the kind that has long, slanted sides that get broken off shorter transverse sides. It has taken several hundred million years to file this saw blade, an enduring interplay between various geological processes.

Krokavatnet

On Sunday the 29th of January, 1989, at 17:38 o'clock, Etna shook. The earthquake, with its epicentre ca. 9 kilometres south of Etne centre, had a strength of 4.2 on the Richters scale. This could be felt over large parts of West Land, especially in the areas around Åkra, Etne, Hardanger Fjord and Sauda Fjord. The earthquake was the largest that has ever been measured in Hordaland.

Kyrping

The trading post down by the fjord at Kyrping does not belong to the oldest group of trading posts from the 1600s and 1700s. It was only after the liberalisation of the trading legislation that trade was established here.

Langfoss

Langøy

Up to 1842 it was necessary to have a royal letter of privilege in order to carry out trade. According to the law only city dwellers were allowed to obtain such a privilege, and in Hordaland it was thus the citizens of Bergen who owned and ran the trading centres. In 1842, following a liberalisation of the trading legislation, the privilege arrangement was abandoned and anyone could apply to the municipal council for permission to carry out trading activity. Landøy is one of the places that were established in this period.

Skånevik- the trading post

There are only two buildings left of the old trading and guesthouse settlement in Skånevik. They are in the centre, close to the main road passing through the settlement. The other buildings that belonged to the place, the lodging house (“Holteriet”), the bakery, the courthouse, the boathouse and the sea house with the store, were pulled down in the last century.

Vatlestraumen

There are coal bits hidden in the sand under Vatlestraumen. These remains from a geological layer from the Jurassic Period were discovered when the undersea Bjorøy Tunnel was built in 1994. Oil- and gas reservoirs in the Troll Field in the sea west of Hordaland are from the same time. It is, nonetheless, quite surprising to find bedrock from dinosaur time inside of the outer islands of western Norway. On the Scandinavian mainland north of Denmark, there are only a very few places where one f inds rock from this time in earth history.